


something inside me's changed

by alyciaclebnam



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Bemily Week, F/F, Sharing a Bed, pp2 au where jeca aren't together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-18
Packaged: 2019-11-23 10:32:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18150710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyciaclebnam/pseuds/alyciaclebnam
Summary: Chloe plans a surprise spring break trip for the Bellas, who have been working hard on the Worlds setlist. Unfortunately for Beca and Emily, the beach house she books ends up being one bed short.(for day 5 of bemily week - oh no, there's only one bed)





	something inside me's changed

 

If Satan demanded a sin in exchange for a soft bed, Beca would deign to take a crotch shot at God himself.

Between all her responsibilities – being a college senior, an intern at a recording studio, and half the Barden Bellas’ leadership team – she’s somewhat worse for wear. But since she’s co-captain of this amoral acapella accompaniment, she can’t just sneak away from rehearsal to nap in between the auditorium bleachers, no matter how badly she wants to.

Until Chloe decides to call it a day, Beca has no choice but to power through. After all, she doesn’t want to look like a sloppy leader, especially in front of their newest recruit.

Chloe, bless her soul, seems to notice that Beca is struggling to stay on her feet and starts finally wrapping things up.

Beca is two steps away from collapsing into the nearest seat when Chloe says that she has an important announcement to give before they all abscond. A few of the Bellas look towards Beca, who, as Chloe’s co-captain, _must_ know what’s going on, but she just shrugs in response.

Chloe is going rogue right now; Beca knows as much as they do.

“Firstly…” Chloe begins, clapping her hands together. Her eyes are shining as she looks around at them. “I just wanted to say that I’m proud of all of us. The new setlist is looking and sounding _amazingly_ good, and I can’t wait for the Bellas to crush it at the World Championship.”

Fat Amy whoops and interjects with a “Hands in, aca-bitches!” which Beca rolls her eyes at, but she still allows herself to be dragged into the fray. She stifles a laugh at Emily’s bewilderment, realising that this is probably her first official Bellas hand-stack.

Beca watches her expression melt into one of delight when she recognises what’s happening, and she wonders if someone bothered to explain _any_ of the Bellas traditions to their poor little Legacy.

Then Beca realises that, as one of Emily’s captains, that was probably _her_ job.

“1, 2-”

They manage to harmonise _on_ three, which is surprising given the number of times they still get it wrong – even now, after almost four years together. Emily somehow finds her footing too, all by herself, albeit after a confused and pitchy start.

Beca has had doubts about handing the Bellas captaincy to Emily, since she’s the only one not graduating at the end of the year, but that tiny action dispels her fears. Emily has kept pace with them since she arrived, even though they (read: Beca) forgot that she was just a baby and neglected to give her any direction.

Emily will find a way to make it work, Beca thinks decisively.

Chloe reclaims the spotlight once everyone settles back down. “I feel like we deserve a break after prepping so hard for Worlds,” she says earnestly. “And I hope no one has plans for spring break…”

Jessica looks like she has something to say to that, but Chloe steamrolls over her before Beca can open her mouth to ask. Jessica deflates and Beca offers her a sympathetic smile.

“… because we’re going on a trip to coastal Georgia!” Chloe finishes brightly. “I booked us two nights at a cute little beach house!”

The other girls start whispering excitedly amongst themselves, but Beca’s lips draw into a firm line. She’s _seen_ Chloe’s excel spreadsheet detailing the Bellas’ finances (a meticulous system passed on from Aubrey, of course) – they can’t afford a single room for one night at a Motel 6 in downtown Atlanta, much less an entire beach house for two nights in coastal Georgia.

Chloe wavers slightly when she catches Beca’s eye, but the judgemental expression isn’t enough to stop her. She continues, “We can’t afford to stay any longer because we’re kind of incredibly poor without our usual sponsorships and the income we should have been getting from the ICCA victory tour-”

Beca gives her a disapproving look, because that didn’t answer the implicit question _at all_ , but Chloe shakes her off and presses on.

“-but anyway, the house is absolutely _perfect_ ,” she says animatedly. “The deck opens up to a private beach, there’s some great restaurants down the road, a day spa just around the corner – which has a five-star rating on Yelp!” she proclaims, and then adopts an impish grin. “ _And_ I heard that there’s a nudist resort not too far from us-”

“Nope,” Beca cuts in, slamming the breaks on that idea before it gains traction. She can already see Stacie and Chloe making eyes at each other. “I’m straight up veto-ing the nude thing. One muffgate scandal was enough for me. No offence, Amy.”

“None taken. I know I have a lovely vagina,” Fat Amy says airily, waving a hand over her crotch and then pointing it at Emily. “It’s Legacy-approved.”

Beca looks at Emily questioningly. Emily shakes her head and doesn’t meet her eyes, giving the impression that she wants to be anywhere but here.

Beca takes pity on Emily and reiterates her statement, mostly for Chloe and Stacie’s benefit, “There will be no public nudity on this trip.”

“Okay, party pooper. No nudie time for your girls,” Chloe concedes with a good-natured sigh. Her gaze travels meaningfully down Beca’s body and she adds, “Fortunately, I’ve already seen all there is to see.”

Snickers circulate through the group, and Beca flushes at the way Stacie pumps her brows suggestively. The girls know all about Beca and Chloe’s shower duet by now, of course. The story comes up a lot on karaoke nights, particularly if Chloe is lacking a duet partner; she enjoys emphasising the fact that someone _will_ end up singing with her, whether they want to or not.

“It’s time to pack your bags, ladies!” Chloe declares, when the laughter dies down and all that lingers between the Bellas is a buzzing energy. “We’re going on vacation!”

***

Fat Amy has been permanently banned from driving the Bellas bus ever since the empty gas tank incident in freshman year. The ban was fortuitous, because they later discovered that Amy didn’t even have a valid _Australian_ driver’s licence, much less a U.S. commercial driver’s licence. Thankfully, Ashley came in clutch and revealed her CDL permit, and bus driving duty has been hers ever since.

Beca claims the row behind the driver’s seat for their trip to the coast. She prefers to work undisturbed, and she knows she can count on Ashley to be quiet.

Honestly, Beca still isn’t sure whether Ashley’s demeanour is by choice or the result of her four-year tenure in the background of every Bellas arrangement. Either way, Beca thinks she’ll make for good company during the drive.

Beca spends most of the five-hour trip working on her demo, but all she ends up with is a hard-drive of half-baked mixes.

Her boss wants more stuff like _Flashlight_ , but she doesn’t think she can follow through. She knows how to make music, but she doesn’t know how to write a _song_. Music is music, but songs need _words_ , and she’s not a lyricist.

It’s becoming clear that _Flashlight_ was both a blessing and a curse. Beca finally had something worthwhile to show Sammy… but now he’s under the impression that she has enough talent to replicate its success.

She _can’t_ though. She’s tried a dozen times over; all she can come up with are instrumental tracks, because she can’t write a decent lyric to save her life.

Beca knows she has _some_ talent. She’s good at mixing when she’s got pre-existing songs to work with, layers that she can strip down and build up again in a fresh, exciting way. But Sammy doesn’t want that from her, not now that he knows what she can do.

///

 _“I like you, Bobby, and I genuinely want you to succeed. But what I need is for you to stop pussyfooting around with those glee club mashups and make more songs like_ Flashlight _,” he tells her sternly. “You need, what –  three, four more songs for a demo? Give me that, and I’ll send you anywhere you want to go in this industry.”_

 _Sammy must read Beca’s heavy swallow as scepticism, because he continues on, “Oh yeah. I could send your music to whoever you want, wherever you want; I’ve got connections to some big names. And now I’m_ your _connection,” he touches a finger to her forehead at the word ‘your’ and Beca has to clasp her hands together to avoid throttling him._

_“You want to work with Snoop again? I can make it happen. You want to be a pop star?” his face pinches up, but it smooths out a moment later and he gives a shrug. “The market’s a little saturated right now but I can make it happen. Don’t squander my goodwill, Leslie.”_

///

Beca’s starting to think that she might not be cut out for this. If it wasn’t for Emily’s song-writing talent, then she wouldn’t have had anything to showcase in the first place. Maybe she just got lucky with Emily, found her in right place at the right time or whatever.

She wonders whether it’s finally time to pack it in, to prepare to spend the rest of her working life chained to a desk in an office cubicle. Dreams are called _dreams_ for a reason, aren’t they?

Beca closes her laptop with more force than it deserves. She hangs her head, digging the heels of her palms into her eyes so hard that all she can see is white. She feels someone drop into the seat beside her and monotonously tells them to fuck off.

She doesn’t mean to be rude, but she’s _not_ in the mood to entertain anyone right now.

They don’t move though, and Beca is forced to open her eyes so she can glare them into submission.

Unfortunately for Beca, the person beside her is Chloe, who has had years to develop an immunity to her entire range of morose expressions. Chloe takes the laptop, tucks it away into Beca’s messenger bag and sets the bag back on the floor. She then pulls a pastel pink eye mask from her pocket and holds it pointedly in front of Beca’s nose.

“We’ve still got an hour to go,” Chloe tells her. “I’ll wake you when we get there.”

Beca rolls her eyes but accepts the mask with mumbled thanks. She naps fitfully for the remainder of the drive, unable to rest easy with the swirling doubt at the back of her mind.

***

Beca gets a call from the studio as Ashley pulls into the driveway of the beach house. She stumbles off the bus on numb legs and heads straight for the closest patch of shade, under the awning over the front door.

Her pasty skin wouldn’t last a minute in the midday sun without protection, and she doesn’t want to spend the next two days covered in aloe. She’s here to finally _relax_ , goddamn it, not find another reason to make her nights more restless.

Beca half-listens to Dax on the phone and half-listens to Emily naively offer to unload the bus while everyone else gets settled. She nods absently as the Bellas file past her into the house, making all manner of affirming noises as Dax rambles on about his new YouTube find – some girl he’s calling the next _Ed Sheeran_ , except with a ukulele.

Then Dax goes quiet for a long while. Beca can hear Sammy berating him in the background – something about waterboarding him with his skinny hazelnut macchiato if he keeps talking about the ukulele girl – and she waits it out, watching Emily traverse the aisle a few times to fetch all of Amy’s bags, which took up the entire back row of the bus.

Dax eventually returns to the phone, but he doesn’t get much more than a word in – Beca cuts him off when she sees Emily going for her sound equipment in the front row.

“Can you hold on a sec?” Beca says to Dax, putting the phone on mute before he can even reply. She calls out to Emily, “Hey Legacy, don’t worry about my bags! I’ll get them!”

Emily squints at her through the bus window. Beca is pretty sure she didn’t hear her, because the girl just smiles and nods, and then continues to grab Beca’s stuff anyway.

Beca sighs and takes the phone off mute, resigning herself to monitor Emily closely. She trusts that Emily won’t throw her stuff around carelessly, but she stands by her belief that pretty people have a physicality that exists to mask major personality deficits.

In Emily’s case, Beca is reasonably sure that her prettiness obscures her clumsiness. The clumsiness doesn’t appear to be physical – at least as far as Beca knows – but Emily definitely suffers from _social_ clumsiness, and the concepts are close enough for Beca to take it as a red flag.

Beca only unclenches when all her equipment is sitting safely on the driveway. Her stuff seems to be the last of it, because Emily then starts relaying everything from the driveway into the house.

She feels bad about letting Emily do all the work, since most of the bags belong to her and Amy, but as much as she wants to tune out Dax and his hipster digressions, she still needs to figure out whether he’s actually trying to convey anything important about her internship.

As Emily grabs hold of the final bag, Dax says something about the quinoa salad he’s having for lunch and abruptly ends the call. Despite having wasted precious minutes of her life, Beca refrains from throwing her phone across the way and acknowledges Emily with a thin-lipped smile.

She follows Emily into the house, taking its features in with curious eyes – the dark wood panelled walls, the cosy-looking white furniture, the sky-blue accent pieces dotted around the space. The double doors to the deck are wide open, framing the roiling ocean waves in the distance.

Chloe bounces in from the hallway, already dressed down in a polka-dot bikini. She thanks Emily for bringing in the rest of the bags, but Emily just shakes her head and says it was no problem. Chloe gives Emily’s cheek an affable pinch and then asks Beca to tighten the strings of her bikini top, spinning around without waiting for an answer.

“Who was that on the phone?” she asks curiously, pulling her hair over her shoulder and out of the way.

Beca slides her phone into her pocket and starts re-tying Chloe’s bikini. “Just another one of the interns at the studio,” she says dismissively. “He was being weird though. Weirder than usual, I mean. He’s a hipster, so his base level is already at weird.”

Chloe hums sympathetically and Beca signals that she’s done. “Thanks, babe.”

Emily hesitantly raises her hand and both captains look to her. Beca wonders if they should be training the softness out of her, even if it _is_ somewhat endearing.

“Sorry, do I just…?” Emily trails off and points her thumb to the hall.

“Oh! Yeah, of course,” Chloe says, nodding. “Everybody else has claimed their rooms, so just take whichever one is free.”

But the girls choose that moment to start pouring out of the hallway, blocking Emily from getting too far. Like Chloe, they’re all dressed for the beach, and they swarm noisily towards the back door.

Fat Amy ambles out last, adjusting the neon pink sarong around her waist. “Hey Red, we might have a tiny problem on our hands,” she says, staring meaningfully at Chloe as she passes by.

Beca frowns. She recognises that tone – it’s the deliberately light one that means the problem is much worse than Amy is letting on. “What’s wrong, Ames?”

Amy hums for the longest time, her gaze flicking between Chloe and Beca, like she’s not sure she wants to say anything anymore. Beca stares at her, unimpressed, until she breaks.

“Ginger Spice must have a made a mistake, ‘cause there are no single beds left, just a double,” Amy divulges reluctantly. “Which means tonight is the night when two-” her left hand moves to point at Emily, while her right points at Beca. “-become one,” she brings her hands together with a forced smile and then heads for the back door.

Emily squeaks at the insinuation. Chloe’s apologetic gaze bounces between her and Beca.

“I’m so sorry,” Chloe says, her face all pinched up like she might cry. She bounces back quickly enough though, and Beca sags with relief, until she continues on, “But it _does_ makes sense for you two to share, right? Dimensionally speaking, since Emily is the tallest and Beca is the smallest-”

Beca laughs sharply. “That’s not-” she shakes her head in disbelief. “That’s _not_ how it works, Chloe.”

Emily nods along with her, brows furrowed. “Shouldn’t the two smallest people be sharing a bed?”

“Oh, so you think Beca should sleep with Flo?” Chloe asks. Beca wrinkles her nose at the suggestion.

Emily looks visibly distressed. “No! N-not like-” she stammers, glancing between the two captains. “I mean, not if she doesn’t want to?”

Beca sighs heavily. She wouldn’t have stood for this back in freshman year; would rather have slept on the floor than shared a bed with anyone. But Beca is _captain_ now, and she can’t do whatever she wants anymore.

She’ll just have to take this one on the chin. Even though it’s technically Chloe’s fault.

“Flo kicks in her sleep,” Beca concedes, too tired to argue further. “So I guess we’re bunking together for the weekend, Legacy.”

***

Beca and Emily lug their bags into the last empty bedroom – which is, naturally, the one closest to the toilet. There is some unspoken agreement to not draw attention to the bed that they’ll be sharing later, and they both avoid looking at it as they retrieve their swimsuits.

When Beca is satisfied that every inch of exposed skin has been slathered with SPF 50+ sunscreen, she dons her darkest pair of sunglasses and follows Emily through the double doors at the back of the house. They cross the deck together – Beca snags the flowery beach umbrella propped against the railing with an undisguised sigh of relief – and head out to join the Bellas on their stretch of private beach.

Emily takes the lead with an excited bounce in her step. Beca lags behind as the sand starts transitioning from dry to wet. Emily sends her a questioning look and slows to a stop.

Beca hikes the strap of her messenger bag up with a thumb. “I’ve actually got a lot of work to do,” she says apologetically. “I’m probably gonna hang around here for a while.”

“Oh,” Emily says, tugging at the ends of the towel slung over her shoulders. “But I thought we were _all_ supposed to be taking a break…?”

Beca releases a huffed laugh. “From preparing for Worlds, sure. But from my internship?” she shrugs resignedly. Emily offers a sympathetic smile. “No rest for the weary.”

Beca busies herself with the beach umbrella, stabbing it firmly in the sand. She glances up at Emily, having expected her to leave already, but she’s still standing in the same spot, staring out at the water.

“Go join the girls,” Beca insists, opening the umbrella with a grunt. She tries to angle it to cast maximum shade and adds, “Don’t feel like you have to stay and suffer with me. I won’t be offended if you go, I promise.”

Emily bites her lip, glancing guiltily between her and the Bellas, like she doesn’t want to leave Beca alone while the rest of them have fun. Beca unfurls the beach towel she had tucked under her armpit, waiting for Emily to accept that she’ll be okay on her own.

But Emily doesn’t do anything of the sort – she catches the other end of Beca’s towel and helps smooth it flat on the sand, then proceeds to spread out her own beach towel just outside the cover of the beach umbrella.

“You sure, Legacy?” Beca asks pointedly, dropping onto her towel and relishing in the cool shade. She starts pulling her laptop and headphones from her messenger bag. “You really don’t want to join them in the water?”

Emily nods decisively and lays down on her back, folding her hands under her head. “It’s still early; I have the rest of the day for that,” she says by way of explanation, when she catches Beca’s doubtful stare.

Beca has no choice but to believe her. Though Emily has been part of the Bellas for months now, she doesn’t seem to want to accept Beca’s lone wolf tendencies. Beca would be annoyed if anyone else refused to leave her be like Emily does, but Emily is so genuinely _nice_ that Beca can’t muster anything beyond fond exasperation.

If she wasn’t already overheating from performing the slightest physical movement in the early afternoon sun, she might have felt warm and tingly at the notion that Emily just wants to make sure she doesn’t feel alone.

In all honesty though, Beca doesn’t _mind_ having Emily around. Her presence is usually pretty unobtrusive, and Beca actually finds her really easy to talk to, which is surprising given Emily’s bumbling social skills and Beca’s somewhat misanthropic demeanour.

Beca boots her laptop up and pushes her sunglasses to the top of her head. Her music program is still open on her most recent attempt at a mix. She’s already starting to lose faith in it, even though it’s not much of a song yet.

She sighs and resigns herself to her work anyway, but not before she catches a glimpse of Emily with her eyes closed, smiling contentedly up at the sky.

***

“One and two and three and four and, one and two and three and four and…” Beca counts along with the eighth-note pattern under her breath, listening to the looping synth drumbeat she’s created over the click track.

_Kick and snare and three kick snare and, kick kick snare and three and snare and…_

She’s pretty happy with it, so she decides to move on to the next thing.

She’s got this sliding riff in her head that might make for a catchy hook, she thinks. She contemplates going back to the house to grab her MIDI keyboard, but she settles for the virtual version on her laptop instead. It’s harder to work with than an _actual_ piano keyboard, since she has to move the mouse and click for every individual note, but the thought of having to trek back through the sun ultimately keeps her seated.

She plays around with a few preset tones, eventually landing on a fuzzy electric guitar, which she throws a chorus effect on to make it sound rich and shimmery. She starts layering guitar notes over the drums, humming along as she does.

She eventually scraps the chorus effect – it sounds too much like cheesy 80s synth pop now that she’s listened to it for minutes on end – and sticks with a clean electric guitar tone.

The guitar riff ends up being as simple as the drumbeat, but on the whole, Beca thinks it’s a nice instrumental track that she can record vocals over.

Once she _has_ something for the vocals, that is. She’s got a document open in the background, ready and waiting for her to start brainstorming lyrics, but the page is depressingly blank. She pulls it up on the screen and stares pleadingly at the blinking text cursor, hoping against hope that the words will finally come to her.

They don’t, not even after five whole minutes of praying to the aca-gods. She stops the instrumental track from looping and tugs her headphones off with a disgruntled huff.

The noise makes Emily turn her head towards Beca. She’s been quiet since they settled on the sand, sunbathing and watching the Bellas play around in the water.

“What are you working on?” Emily asks curiously.

Beca scrunches her face at the question. “It’s, uh. Nothing much,” is what she ends up saying. It isn’t far from the truth.

Emily sits up and shuffles back on her towel, presumably to take a look at Beca’s work. She doesn’t seem inclined to leave the sun though, not even for a second, only coming as close as the umbrella shade allows. Beca shifts sideways until she’s at the very edge of her protective circle, so Emily can actually see what’s happening on her laptop screen.

Emily draws her legs up to her chest and peers at the source of Beca’s frustration. “That doesn’t look like nothing. Is it a new song?”

“It’s supposed to be, yeah,” Beca admits. “It’s not really working out though. I can create beats, compose riffs, come up with hooks…” she trails off with a shrug. “But I can’t write lyrics. That’s- that’s your area of expertise, I guess.”

Emily flushes. Beca knows the pink in her cheeks isn’t from the sun, because every time she’s glanced over at Emily, her tan has only grown progressively more golden, not a hint of burnt skin in sight.

Emily must feel particularly tickled by the compliment, because she proceeds to hide her face in her knees. Her bashfulness is kind of endearing, Beca thinks. And so is the way Emily peeks back at her with her forehead still pressed against her legs.

Beca wonders if it’s too much to ask for her help. She’s already asked to use _Flashlight_ as part of her demo, and she doesn’t want to overstep Emily’s generosity… but her creative well is drier than the Bellas’ bank account and she’s growing desperate.

“Do you think-” Beca swallows heavily. Emily lifts her head back up, her expression slightly concerned. “Do you want to help me make another song?”

Emily’s mouth falls open and she stares at Beca in muted wonderment, like their first collaboration never even happened. Beca’s internal organs drop back down from where they’d jammed themselves up her throat, relieved by the positive response.

“Seriously?” Emily asks, her voice cracking right at the end. Her eyes are suspiciously shimmery.

“Yeah, dude,” Beca says as sincerely as she can, despite her budding fear that Emily might burst into tears. Her tenure in the Bellas house hasn’t taught her a single thing about how to handle crying girls. “Totes serious.”

She scrunches her face at Chloe’s obvious influence on her vocabulary. Emily doesn’t think anything of it though, judging by her widening grin.

Beca continues more self-assuredly, now that she knows Emily is happy to collaborate again, “Sammy wants more stuff like _Flashlight_ , and what better way to do that than work with you?”

Emily clasps her hands together tightly, like she’s trying to contain her enthusiasm. “Okay!” she declares. “I would be- that would be an honour,” she says earnestly, with a deep head nod that looks like an approximation of a bow.

Beca breathes a laugh. Emily is a weird one for sure, but then again, so are _all_ of the Bellas.

“Show me what you have so far?” Emily asks.

Beca hands over her headphones and plays the instrumental track. She watches Emily groove along to it for a long while, clicking her fingers to the beat and bobbing her head. Emily eventually closes her eyes and starts to hum, composing a lilting melody that Beca unconsciously relaxes into.

She gets caught up in the tranquillity of the moment – until Emily attempts to rupture her eardrums, and then she’s abruptly brought back to the present.

“I THINK I-” Emily shouts, and Beca hurriedly knocks the noise-cancelling headphones off her ears. Emily squeaks when she realises how loud she was speaking, her eyes comically wide as she begins spouting a litany of apologies. “Sorry! I’m- oh god, I didn’t mean to- uh, sorry. I just…” she hesitates, chewing the inside of her bottom lip. “I think I’ve come up with something that could work?”

“Sure,” Beca says easily. She fights the urge to massage her throbbing ears. “Do you want me to-” she gestures at her laptop. “I can play the track over the speakers and you can do your thing over the top?”

Emily nods and slips the headphones down around her neck. Beca unplugs them from her laptop and tries not to focus on how Emily looks wearing her gear like that, directs her attention towards turning the volume up instead. The track begins to play – it’s a little flat through her laptop speakers, and some of it is lost to the seaside breeze, but there’s nothing that Beca can do about that.

Emily doesn’t seem to mind anyway, starting to sway side to side with the beat.

“Whenever you’re ready,” Beca says, balancing the laptop on her knee - as close as she can get to Emily without putting it in direct sunlight.

Emily waits for the track to finish its current loop before she starts singing.

 _“You know just how to make my heart beat faster_  
_Emotional earthquake, bring on disaster_  
_You hit me head on, got me weak in my knees_  
_Something inside me’s changed…”_

She transitions to humming the melody she’s created, trailing off with a small smile. Beca turns the laptop volume down slightly.

“You-” Beca clears her throat, oddly stupefied. She _knows_ Emily is a talented writer, obviously, but watching the magic happen is another thing entirely. “You came up with that on the fly?”

Emily shakes her head in the negative and glances out towards the ocean. “I mean- the melody, yeah. But not the lyrics. I’ve been messing around with those ones for a while; I couldn’t get them to work,” she shrugs and looks shyly at Beca. “Until now, that is.”

Beca can’t believe her luck. “Sweet merciful aca-gods,” she stage-whispers to the underside of her beach umbrella. “Thank you for sending her down to me.”

Her words make Emily laugh so hard that she snorts. Beca gazes at Emily fondly, grateful that the universe is finally cutting her a break.

They don’t get much more done on the track, because Chloe ambushes them and declares that Emily has been tanning for too long. She’s kind enough to stand downwind from Beca, to spare her laptop from getting dripped on, but she does manage to lure Emily away into the water, leaving Beca with only the echo of Emily’s lilting melody.

***

Beca continues to work on the track, feeling more inspired after Emily’s contribution.

She’s pleasantly surprised when Emily returns, dripping wet and smiling from ear to ear. Beca looks up at her questioningly.

“Chloe wanted me to ask if you were coming,” Emily explains, hovering a couple feet from Beca’s shade with one hand shielding her eyes from the sun.

“Smart move, sending you back,” Beca acknowledges, pushing her headphones down around her neck with a wry smile. “She probably thought you stood the best chance of convincing me to get in the water.”

“Pssht. She thought-” Emily cuts herself off with a disbelieving laugh. “Me? Convince _you_?” she scrunches her nose and says, playfully, “That can’t be right.”

“You have a very persuasive face,” Beca insists, unconsciously glancing around Emily’s face and accidentally following the water dripping off her jaw onto her chest. She frowns to herself and directs her gaze to somewhere less pervy than Legacy’s boobs. “It’s all innocent and shit. If you weren’t such a nice person, you could probably break a lot of hearts with it.”

Emily blushes a deep red that’s visible even through her sun-bronzed skin. Beca smirks, mildly entertained by how easy it is to set Emily off.

“You’re really not coming into the water?” Emily asks, her mouth drawing into a slight pout.

Beca shakes her head amusedly. “I have the complexion of a meringue,” she responds dryly, adjusting herself to make sure all her limbs are still under the shade of the umbrella. “Two seconds in the sun at this hour and I’ll be the perfect topping to a Key lime pie.”

Emily laughs and accepts the excuse pretty easily, unlike Chloe, who probably would have dragged her out by the tit if she had to.

“Okay, I’ll leave you to your work,” she says, taking a couple of slow steps backward. “But if you change your mind…”

Emily nods her head meaningfully towards the water and then departs with a small smile.

***

Beca watches the Bellas splashing around in the ocean. She chuckles at their antics, at Fat Amy’s swarm of inflatables spreading further and further out to sea because she doesn’t have enough hands to keep them in check.

Emily occasionally looks back at her and waves. Beca goes off-brand and makes herself wave back every time. She’s not sure Emily would catch a head nod from this distance, and she doesn’t want Emily to think she’s _ignoring_ her.

They look like they’re all having fun out there – even Cynthia-Rose, who isn’t a confident swimmer, and is just sitting in the shallows letting the tide rush over her legs. Their collective cheerfulness almost makes Beca want to join them in the water.

_Almost._

It’s still early afternoon though, and the sun is bearing down on the beach like Fat Amy on the last piece of cheesecake.

Beca settles for moving her umbrella closer to the water’s edge. Emily’s enthusiastic wave, coupled with a radiant smile, somehow makes it worth the hassle.

***

After almost falling asleep on her beach towel and exposing her foot to the sun for long enough that she’s worried about developing a reverse sock tan, Beca tells the closest Bella, Chloe, that she’s heading back to the house to take a nap.

She puts her bag away in her – their – room, sparing the bed only a passing glance. She doesn’t want to like, _violate_ the space by sleeping in it without Emily’s knowledge, so she traipses back to the living room instead.

She draws all the curtains and sinks onto one of the plush couches, curling up on her side and closing her eyes. She’s warm but not too warm, and the lighting is dim enough to not be bothersome.

She drifts off within seconds.

***

She doesn’t wake until an hour or so later, when the girls come trampling across the deck and into the house.

They’re not too loud, all things considered, but Beca has always been a light sleeper and she sits up to greet them with bleary eyes. She waves off Chloe’s apologetic smile, knowing that there’s only so much they can do to control the Bellas.

They spend the rest of the afternoon together in the living room, spilling off the couches and onto the floor because they don’t all fit, trading stories and gossiping and doing everything that Beca thought she hated before she joined the Bellas – before she discovered that socialising isn’t so painful when you’re with people you actually _like_.

It’s not what Beca pictures when she thinks about a relaxing vacation, but her stomach hurts from laughing and her chest feels lighter than it has in a long while.

***

They end up eating dinner at some fancy Italian restaurant down the road. Chloe and Stacie have been looking for any excuse to wear the slinky dresses they’d packed, and Beca is easily swayed by the prospect of having pizza _and_ pasta.

Beca has seen Fat Amy and Flo drunkenly demolish a whole pie in seconds by rolling the slices up and stuffing them down their throats, and she delights at watching them try to eat pizza with knives and forks. Fat Amy lasts ten minutes before she gives up on the pretence, glancing around to make sure the wait staff aren’t watching and then picking up her slice with an anticipatory grin.

Emily manages to sneak a few glasses of wine with her risotto, courtesy of Beca and Stacie, and they have one _hell_ of a time getting her weak-kneed giraffe body through the door without tipping the staff off and getting busted for underage drinking.

Thankfully, Emily regains most of her faculties by the time they get back to the beach house, and she finally stops using Beca as her self-proclaimed height-appropriate crutch. They walk to their room with little difficulty, and everything is totally fine.

Until they come face-to-face with the double bed and are reminded about their sleeping arrangements.

“Uh,” Beca hesitates, staring at the sheets. The sky-blue quilt cover is innocuous, but she feels oddly offended by it. Maybe it’s because there’s only one, and she has to _share it with another person_.

She blows out a heavy breath and reluctantly asks, “Do you have, um, a preferred side?”

Emily shakes her head. Beca hopes the pink in her cheeks is a residual effect of the alcohol, and not from the awkwardness of this conversation.

“Okay. Cool. I’m gonna-” Beca jerks her thumb towards the hall with a flustered smile. “-go get changed.”

She quickly collects her things and shoots back out the door. Safe in the refuge of the bathroom, she splashes her face with cold water and tells herself to get a fucking grip. She can _totally_ share a bed with Emily for a couple nights. It’s no big deal.

(Except it _is_ a big deal, because she’s never slept in the same bed as _anyone_ before, not even during her brief flirtationship with Jesse in freshman year.)

Beca walks back down the hall with minty breath and a renewed determination. There are a few seconds where she feels her resolve weaken – during a graceless tango in front of their door as Beca tries to get back into their room and Emily tries to head to the bathroom to brush her own teeth – but Beca works past it like a champ, and soon enough she’s settled on the furthest side of the bed with the covers tucked up to her waist.

When Emily comes back, the sound of the door clicking closed behind her is reminiscent of a gunshot. Beca is unnaturally still as Emily slides under the covers beside her.

The two of them lie in silence for a moment, before Beca realises that something about their situation is fundamentally wrong. Emily must realise it too, because they glance at each other and exchange sheepish expressions.

“The lights,” they both say.

Emily slips out from under the covers with a breathy laugh and flips the light switch. The room doesn’t plunge into complete darkness, not with the moon shining so brightly outside their window, but Beca is grateful for even the slightest reprieve.

“Did you have fun today?” Beca asks as Emily settles back on her side of the bed. Their pillows are close enough that she can feel Emily nodding.

“So much fun,” Emily says through a yawn. “You?”

Beca tries to fight her own yawn, only to end up with watery eyes. “Yeah. It was a good day,” she agrees, running a hand down her face to wipe the traitorous tears away.

“Even though you didn’t get in the water?” Emily asks, turning her head towards Beca.

Beca side-eyes her and sees the teasing arch of her brows, just visible in the moonlight. “ _Especially_ because I didn’t get in the water,” she says emphatically.

Emily laughs lightly and turns to face the ceiling again. Beca feels her roll around a little, trying to get comfortable. After a few long minutes of stillness, Emily mumbles sleepily, sounding like she has one cheek smushed into her pillow.

“G’night, Bec.”

Beca’s mouth twists into a small smile, as it often does around Emily, and her shoulders finally relax into the bed.

“Night, Em.”

***

Beca wakes when she feels the mattress shift. It’s still dark out, so she thinks nothing of it – Emily has probably just gone to the bathroom. She closes her eyes and lies in wait, knowing that she’ll only be woken up again when Emily gets back into bed.

Except Emily doesn’t return. Not after a couple minutes, and not even a couple minutes after that.

Beca cracks an eye open. The space beside her is empty, as expected. It takes a few seconds, but she eventually notices that Emily’s pillow is gone.

When her sleep-addled brain connects the dots, she bluntly announces, “Emily, are you on the floor?”

The silence stretches on – long enough for Beca to think that she was wrong – but then she catches the almost incomprehensible _no_ whispered from beyond the far edge of the bed.

She reluctantly rolls over and squints down into the darkness. “What are you doing?”

Emily hems and haws. “I’m, uh. Sleeping?”

Beca’s eyes eventually adjust to the dim moonlight and she sees that Emily is lying on a beach towel with a sweatshirt draped over her midsection like the world’s saddest blanket.

She’s too drowsy to formulate a coherent argument, so she just offers a resolute, “No.”

Emily is understandably confused.

Beca sighs. “Get your butt back in this bed,” she orders, though the words lack bite. She just wants to go back to sleep.

Nevertheless, Emily hesitates. “I don’t mind, honestly-”

Beca cuts her off. “Emily Middle-Name Junk. Don’t make me go next door and borrow some of Lilly’s knives so I can pin you to this mattress.”

But Emily doesn’t seem to get the picture, hellbent on satisfying some inexplicable noble intention. “I’ll be fine down here,” she insists, adjusting her sweatshirt more evenly across her torso.

Beca tuts. “I’m not shouldering the blame for your future back problems. And I _really_ don’t need a lecture from Mrs. Junk about not taking care of her baby,” she responds dryly, but she softens her tone and then says, “We both know I’d lose a wrestling match against a squirrel, so please save me the hassle – don’t make me struggle with your perfectly proportioned runway model body, and just get back here.”

Emily still doesn’t move, which makes Beca groan in frustration.

“Seriously?”

It goes without answer. Beca comes to an ultimatum.

“I will kick you out of the Bellas if you don’t get your ass in this bed.”

That _finally_ gets Emily moving. She scrambles up and back onto her side of the bed, though she doesn’t make any effort to get back under the covers.

“Thank you,” Beca says drolly. Emily doesn’t respond.

A few minutes pass, but Beca is no closer to sleep. Though the air between them is dead, she can tell from Emily’s breathing that she’s still awake too. She waits, wondering if Emily will speak first.

She does. She rolls onto her side to face Beca and quietly asks, “You wouldn’t have kicked me out of the Bellas for real, right?”

Beca wants so badly to just go back to sleep, but the undercurrent of doubt in Emily’s tone is her fault and she knows it.

“No,” she says, before she admits, “I don’t even have the power to do that. Chloe and I would both have to agree that there are fair grounds for dismissal, and then we’d have to ask the other girls’ opinions as well. We added that rule to the Bellas charter during our first year as captains.”

Emily takes a second to process that, then asks, “So if all the others agreed too, you could kick me out?”

Beca smiles a little, thinking that Emily must be joking – except Emily doesn’t laugh or say anything to indicate that she’s being facetious. Beca turns towards Emily questioningly, and is confronted by her serious expression.

“No one is kicking you out,” Beca rushes to clarify, but it does little to alleviate her growing guilt. “I didn’t realise you would think- I didn’t mean to-” she stammers. “ _Fuck_ , I’m sorry.”

Emily laughs breathily. “Don’t apologise,” she says, her hard expression melting into something softer, something sadder. “I’m the one that’s being weird. I’ve just been having an off-day, I guess, and I feel…” she blows a raspberry and Beca gets a face-full of spit particles.

With their close proximity, Beca can feel the embarrassed heat radiating from Emily’s skin. She chooses not to comment on the incident, just wipes her face into the pillow and continues like it never happened.

“I think I get it,” Beca says lightly. “Everything about this situation is-” she pauses, trying to find the right word. “-unexpected. But we’re friends, and we’re _adults_. We can share a bed without it being weird, right?”

“Are we really friends?” Emily asks, her face brightening the slightest bit.

Beca stares at her incredulously. “ _That’s_ what you’re going to focus on?” she furrows her brows, confused by the turn this conversation has taken. “Where is all this insecurity coming from, Legacy? You’re usually so… peppy.”

Emily nuzzles into her pillow, not meeting Beca’s eyes. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “I still have doubts sometimes, about being a real Bella. I think Chloe might have accidentally triggered me with the whole, forgetting-to-get-a-bed-for-the-new-kid thing. I’ve probably just been holding onto it all day.”

Beca sighs in understanding, the pieces finally clicking into place. “Emily…”

But Emily cuts her off, which is fortunate, because Beca is terrible at comforting people and would have probably spewed out whichever platitude came to mind first.

“It’s okay,” she says sincerely. “I know that’s on me. It’s not like Chloe did it on purpose.”

Beca opens her mouth to speak, but she’s interrupted by a strange staticky sound. It stops almost as soon as it starts, but she and Emily both sit up in confusion.

“What the fuck was that,” Beca whispers, her ears pricked and her eyes darting between the dark corners of the room.

The static begins anew, though it lingers this time, accompanied by the distinct sounds of broken sobbing.

_“I’m sorry! I’m so, so, so sorry!”_

The voice crackles like it’s being transmitted over a radio, and Beca frowns, because she recognises exactly who’s crying on the other end.

“Chloe, what the hell?”

But Chloe doesn’t acknowledge her, and the disembodied sobbing continues to fill the room. Beca rolls her eyes and unenthusiastically pushes the covers off her body so she can crawl under the bed, towards the source of the noise.

She surfaces with a grimace, clutching what she suspects is a baby monitor.

Emily shrugs at the questioning look that Beca sends her way. _Good_ , Beca thinks, dusting her knees off and straightening up. Emily isn’t involved in whatever scheme Chloe is trying to pull off.

“Chloe,” Beca says firmly, knowing now that her co-captain can hear. “Explain.”

She tacks on a _please_ at the end, but Emily’s raised brows suggest that her insincerity has bled through in her tone. The instruction works nonetheless – Chloe’s blubbering begins to abate, and she attempts to speak.

 _“I was just trying to-”_ she cuts herself short with a hiccup and then starts again, _“I wanted you and Em to-”_ she inhales shakily. _“-bang_.”

Beca stares blankly at the baby monitor. She glances sideways and meets Emily’s wide-eyed gaze, then turns her attention back to the monitor. She switches it off.

Emily scrambles to follow as Beca marches out of the room and down the hall, beating her fist on Chloe’s door. It’s technically Stacie’s door too, but Beca is too incensed to care who she might be disturbing.

“Chloe Beale!” she shouts, thumping at the wood. “I am going to wring your neck hard enough for your nodes to grow back! Open this door right now!”

“I’m sorry!” Chloe wails from behind the still-closed door. “I was just trying to help; I didn’t _mean_ to hurt Emily’s feelings. Please don’t hate me, I love you guys so much!”

Beca had paused to hear Chloe out, but she resumes her indignant thumping at the door when the excuse fails to satisfy her. She only stops when Emily covers her fist and gently lowers it down to her side.

“We don’t hate you,” Emily tells Chloe through the door. Beca wonders how she can be so calm when they just found out that Chloe was trying to set them up like some Machiavellian Cupid. “But I don’t appreciate being manipulated, so we’re definitely talking about this in the morning.”

Beca deflates at Emily’s level-headedness. She’s a little ashamed of her actions; as one of the Bellas captains, _she_ should be setting the example for Emily, not the other way around.

She drops her forehead to the door with a resounding thud. “You got Dax to call me earlier, didn’t you?” Beca asks Chloe, trying to follow Emily’s even-tempered lead. “As a distraction so you could get Emily and I into the same room.”

“Yeah,” Chloe agrees. It sounds as though she’s pressing her face against the wood, like she’s trying to get as close to them as she can without actually opening the door.

Beca realises then that Chloe is probably still wine-drunk from dinner. She wonders if that’s why none of the other girls have come to investigate the commotion in the hallway – because they’re all passed out from the combination of good food and heady alcohol.

“I had a whole other plan to distract Em,” Chloe admits. “But she was so damn _nice_ offering to unload the bus when we got here – she ended up distracting herself.”

Beca frowns into the wood at the notion of Chloe trying to exploit Emily like that. It makes her skin itch uncomfortably, and she abandons her half-assed attempt at remaining composed.

“I’m breaking this baby monitor,” she decides aloud.

“No!” Chloe cries, loudly enough for Beca to jolt away from the door. “Please don’t! I’m _so_ poor from renting this beach house; I was going to return them to Target when we got back home. I still have the receipt!”

Beca begins to tighten her fingers around the baby monitor anyway, until Emily wraps one hand around her wrist and the other around her clenching fist. Beca’s grip relents instinctively, and she reluctantly surrenders the device to Emily.

Emily sets it on the floor in front of the door, tells Chloe where it is, and that she and Beca leaving.

“Come on,” she says to Beca, who is still fuming silently. “Let’s go get some air.”

***

They end up on the outdoor couch on the deck, facing the empty stretch of beach.

“I’m sorry you had to go through all that,” Emily says sheepishly, her hands clamped between her thighs. “I think it was my fault.”

“Your fault?” Beca questions, turning her incredulous expression on Emily. Emily gives an agreeing nod, but Beca doesn’t understand how she could have _any_ fault in this whatsoever. “How could this be anyone’s fault but Chloe’s?”

Emily hesitates, gnawing at her bottom lip and looking out to the shoreline. “I may have… planted the thought in her head,” she divulges.

Beca stares at her confusedly. Emily’s mouth curls into a nervous smile and she spares Beca a glance before turning her gaze back towards the ocean.

“I kinda have a crush on you,” she confesses. Her tone makes it sound almost like a question, not a statement of fact. Beca continues to stare at her in uncomprehending silence. “I’m pretty sure Chloe knew. I just think you’re ridiculously talented and super pretty, and I… I like being around you, y’know?”

Always the pinnacle of eloquence, Beca reacts with a meek, “Oh.”

Emily laughs shakily, taking her response in stride. “Yeah. That’s why I didn’t want to share the bed. I didn’t want to, uh, take advantage of the situation. Or make you uncomfortable.”

“But…” Beca begins confusedly, unsure where to start. Her brain is devoid of any useful commentary. “I didn’t know,” is all she ends up saying.

“That’s how most crushes work, right? You go for someone completely unattainable, and they never find out about it,” Emily says jokingly, though her tone falls flat. She doesn’t look back at Beca once.

Beca shakes her head. “No, I mean,” she frowns, trying to gather her fragmented thoughts into something comprehensible. “I didn’t know about your feelings, so I wouldn’t have had any reason to be uncomfortable sharing a bed. But I still _was_.”

She doesn’t mean to make Emily sag despondently into the couch. She wishes she could reach out and swallow the words back down.

“You were uncomfortable sharing a bed with me?” Emily clarifies in a quiet voice that makes Beca’s chest ache.

“No, not like-” Beca chastises herself for her tactlessness. “Not like _that_ ,” she says. “My discomfort wasn’t because of your feelings; I didn’t even know about them until now, so it _couldn’t_ have been because of that,” she insists, hoping that her gentle tone will encourage Emily to finally look back at her. “I think it might have been because of _my_ feelings.”

Emily whips around to face Beca. “Wait, what?”

Beca wrinkles her nose, unused to treading through emotional terrain, but knowing that she has to – even though the realisation _just_ dawned on her and she’s only had half a minute to process it.

“I think you’re ridiculously talented too,” she offers stiltedly. “And really unfairly pretty.”

Sure, it’s not the most romantic or refined thing that Beca could have said, but she’s never claimed to be a poet. Emily’s expression is hesitant, like she’s not sure whether to believe her.

“I’m not good at emotional talk, okay?” Beca continues, trying not to sound defensive. “But if I’d known about your feelings sooner, then maybe I would have known about mine too.”

“Your… feelings?” Emily questions, the confusion clear on her face.

Beca gives a small nod. “I- I’ll be honest, I don’t really know what they are yet,” she discloses. “But,” she shrugs and offers Emily a half-smile. “You’ve always been different.”

“I’m different?” Emily echoes disconcertedly.

Beca backpedals, instinctively reaching a hand out towards Emily, but pulling back before she can make contact with Emily’s arm.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she says hurriedly, yanking the offending limb to her chest. “It’s, uh. I get this feeling- it’s like…”

She flaps her hands in frustration, looking for all the world like she’s appropriating the hokey pokey.

“Oh wow,” Emily says, furrowing her brows. Beca’s entire body is hot with embarrassment, but she can see the smile threatening to form on Emily’s lips. Thank god, she’s finally understanding what Beca is trying to say. “You really _are_ bad at this.”

Beca draws her useless arms across her chest. “Shut up,” she grumbles, though it’s without malice.

Her burning mortification soothes to something more manageable, even as Emily’s eyes continue to twinkle with amusement, and she works up enough courage to try again.

“I’m usually hard edges and sarcasm and intolerance for social niceties – the other girls can vouch for those charming aspects of my personality,” Beca says dryly. Then she continues, uncharacteristically shyly, “But I’m different around you. You make me act weirdly… _soft_. And I don’t hate that as much as I thought I would.”

Emily’s answering smile is brighter than the silvery-white moonlight that illuminates it. Beca can’t help the way she grins in response, tendrils of affection wrapping warmly around her heart.

“So…” Emily begins, her gaze flickering down to Beca’s mouth. Beca is only human, and her eyes instinctively trace the same path to Emily’s lips. “This is definitely mutual?”

Beca nods and Emily starts leaning towards her. Beca follows her torturously slow lead, feeling her pulse radiating out towards her fingers in anticipation.

“And this is okay?” Emily murmurs, one of her hands sliding halfway up Beca’s thigh and the other curling around Beca’s neck.

Beca swallows heavily. “Yes,” she whispers, unconsciously tilting her head into Emily’s gentle grip.

They’re close enough for Emily’s breath to ghost hotly across her skin, and a pleasant shiver runs down Beca’s spine with every exhale.

She doesn’t know who leans the rest of the way in, but their lips finally meet and Beca sighs contentedly into the kiss, her hands migrating instinctively to hold Emily’s waist. She feels Emily’s mouth curl into a smile against her own, and they pull apart with twin laughs.

***

They eventually settle lengthways on the couch, lying close to make themselves fit into the small space, their noses and foreheads a hair’s breadth from touching. Beca can hear the ocean roiling behind her, imagines the waves crashing over the sand. She doesn’t think she’s ever felt so relaxed.

Emily is the one to break their comfortable silence. “You know, I wrote those lyrics about you,” she says shyly.

Beca can feel Emily holding her breath, waiting for a response. “I’m glad,” she replies, accidentally brushing her nose against Emily’s as she speaks. “Because this would pretty weird otherwise.”

Emily laughs lightly, and Beca revels in the sound. She almost rolls off the couch trying to move her head far back enough to see Emily’s face in full.

From then on, Emily’s hand remains curled loosely atop her waist to anchor her in place.

Beca doesn’t want to disturb the peace again, not now that Emily has closed her eyes and looks to be drifting off, but she smirks wryly to herself when she realises that the couch is smaller than the bed they were initially assigned to.

She predicted a number of things happening on this vacation. She expected that at least one of the Bellas (or maybe all of them) would get drunk and make a scene, and she figured that someone would eventually suggest that they go skinny dipping in the ocean. She expected Jessica and Ashley to disappear and reappear sometime later, both claiming that they’d been there the whole time.

She didn’t anticipate having to share a bed with someone, much less fall asleep in their arms.

Beca wakes when the early morning sun prickles hotly at her skin. She considers getting up and shuffling back to their bed, but Emily is still dead to the world, and Beca doesn’t have the heart to wake her.

She closes her eyes again and tries not to think about how much she’s going to regret letting her heart make decisions. She can already feel her skin turning pink, and she shudders at the knowledge that it will progress to an angry red if Emily doesn’t stir soon.

If she catches a muffled squeal from the living room and hears someone come out onto the deck, accompanied by the shutter sound effect from a phone camera rapidly going off, she doesn’t say anything.

Beca will let Chloe have this victory. She and Emily may have played right into Chloe’s trap, but she can’t deny that she feels like a winner too.

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on tumblr @ alyciaclebnam


End file.
